This group of books includes De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound, and The Happy Marriage by Archibald MacLeish.  

Sizes: 9 1/8 x 5 3/4 in. 7 1/4 x 5 in. 7 x 5 in. 

De Profundis was written by Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), an Irish poet and playwright who became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890’s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for homosexuality.  

The title comes from the Latin for "from the depths” and is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol to his friend and lover Lord Alfred “Bosie”. In its first half, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which resulted in Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency. He indicts both Lord Alfred's vanity and his own weakness. In the second half, Wilde describes his spiritual development in prison and identification with Jesus Christ. Wilde wrote the letter between January and March 1897, close to the end of his imprisonment, and entrusted it to Robert Ross, another former lover, loyal friend, and rival to “Bosie”, and Ross was Wilde's literary executor and oversaw the publication of the book. Ross published the letter in 1905, five years after Wilde's death, giving it the title "De Profundis" from Psalm 130. 

The book is a second edition, with Additional Matter, according to the title page, it was edited by Robert Ross and published by G P Putnam’s Sons in London and New York in 1909, and it is the revised edition, according to the copyright page. the spine is lettered in dark gilt and the front cover has bright gilt lettering, then blank endpapers with the bookplate of Martha Agnew Wentworth on the front paste-down, a frontis drawing of Oscar Wilde with a protective tissue guard that is lettered in red to describe where the portrait came from, then the title page and copyright page, a Prefatory Dedication from iii to ix, a page of Contents on xiii, 154 pages of text, the top edge is gilt, and the last chapter is about the cruelties of prison life and prison reform.  

The book measures 7 1/4 x 5 inches wide and is in very good condition. The binding is tight and the pages and text are very clean, with light rubbing at the heel and crown, light fading on the spine, light soiling on the rear board, and light wear at the tips.  

Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound, is a fourth printing that was published in 1932, and it is a masterpiece of poetry by Ezra Pound (1885 - 1872), an American poet and critic who was a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and he influenced contemporaries like Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce, and Pound has been described as stubborn, cantankerous, bossy, touchy, and "devoid of humor”. He was certainly controversial, and a great poet.  

The book was first published in New York by Horace Liveright in 1926, and the book here has bright gilt lettering on the front cover, faded letters on the spine, blank endpapers with a bookplate depicting a scholar sitting at a desk on the front and rear flyleaves, a half-title and frontis drawing of Pound, then the title page, copyright page, a page dedicated to Mary Moore,  five pages of Contents (unnumbered), 231 pages of text, and a great illustration for “Ripostes” just before page 59.  

The book measures 9 1/8 x 5 3/4 and is in very good condition, with a tight binding and clean pages and text. There is faint rubbing at the tips, and light browning on the page before the frontis drawing of the author, A very desirable book if you collect good poetry.  

The third book is The Happy Marriage And Other Poems by Archibald MacLeish (1892 - 1982), an American poet associated with the modernist school of poetry. He went to Yale and Harvard and fought in the first World War and lived in Paris in the 1920’s, he believed that a poem should be an experience beyond its literal meaning, and he received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1933 for Conquistador, a poetry book he wrote about the exploits of Hernando Cortez.  

The book has blue boards with a wrap-around paper label on the spine, blank endpapers, and it’s a first edition published by Houghton Mifflin in 1924. The copyright page and title page both have the same date, with no other printings, which makes this a first edition. A Note of thanks follows the copyright page, then two pages of Contents (vii - viii), and 80 pages of text. The book also has a dust jacket with the front flap advertising Fir-Flower Tablets by Amy Lowell  and the rear flap has an ad for Legends by Amy Lowell as well.  

The book measures 7 x 5 inches wide and is in very good condition, with a tight binding and clean pages and text, the paper label is in great shape, just a tad of wear on the front flyleaf about the size of a dime, light wear at the tips, and the bottom edges of the blue boards have faded. The dust jacket is in very condition too, with the original price of $1.25 on the front flap, light wear on the spine and clean images on the front and back, and light loss at the corners and light brown spots at the top of the back edge, and an attractive first edition of this poetry book with the dust jacket.  

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